Joyce Carol Oates on productivity: 'I love to write'

They are haunting tales, some surreal. She imagines Poe after death (“Poe Posthumous”), still believing he lives, transplanted to a small rocky island hundreds of miles west of Chile and residing in a lighthouse until dark events intervene. Emily Dickinson is transplanted to the present in “EDickinsonRepliLuxe.” More specifically, there is a robot version of the poet, purchased by a Mr. and Mrs. Krim, which ultimately turns their lives upsidedown.

“American writers are fascinated by their now-iconic, 'classic' predecessors,” Oates states. “There is a kind of hypnotic spell cast by the 19th-century writers of idiosyncratic genius and by the incomparable tragic figure, Hemingway. The major attraction in writing about them in fiction – I've written about each of them in critical essays – was to immerse myself in their language and in their worldviews, to the degree to which I could do this.”

It may seem unfair to query a writer with this many books if she prefers certain works over others, but Oates seems perfectly willing to offer an answer.

“Writers tend to prefer their recent work. I usually name 'Blonde' as one of my favorites of my own books, since it has received so wide and often so sympathetic a response from readers. Other novels close to my heart are 'We Were the Mulvaneys' and 'The Gravedigger's Daughter.' ”

And, as you might suspect, she has new books in the works, two in fact slated for publication in 2009.

“ 'Dear Husband,' she says, “is a collection of recently published stories that have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Harper's, and McSweeney's, on the general subject of marital and love relationships and the tensions between parents and adolescent children. 'A Fair Maiden' is a mystery/suspense novel about a 16-year-old girl who becomes erotically involved with a 68-year-old man of wealth and charisma.”

Any comprehensive list of Joyce Carol Oates' books would be epic in length. Here is a partial history of her fiction. She has also published books of plays, poetry and essays as well as “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982” in 2008.